Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/ iPad Pro with Keyboard and Pencil Announced Michael E. Cohen Apple CEO Tim Cook opened the iPad portion of today's event in San Francisco by saying that the iPad is the 'clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing.' As an example of that vision, [1]iPad Pro, with its ancillary but highly desirable peripherals, is coming in November. Here's what is new in iPad Land. [2][tn_ipad-pro-pencil.jpg] We'll start with an appetizer: the [3]iPad mini 4. This revision of the smallest iPad is even thinner than the last one, faster than the last one, with a better camera than the last one, and the same price as the last one. It's available today, as are the [4]previous models at lower prices. But that's not what you came here for, right? Well, here you go'¦ The so-often-rumored-it-became-a-running-joke iPad Pro is indeed coming, and in three colors (silver, gold, and space gray), sometime in November. The device looks surprisingly like almost every other iPad you've ever seen, except this one has a 12.9 inch screen containing 5.6 million pixels in a housing that is 12 inches (305.7 mm) high by 8.68 inches (220.6 mm) wide by 0.27 inch (6.9 mm) deep (a smidgen thicker than an iPad Air), and which weighs 1.57 pounds (713 gm), just a smidgen heavier than the original iPad of yore. [5][tn_iPad-Pro.jpg] Internally, it has Apple's latest A9X processor with an M9 motion coprocessor that exceeds the performance of earlier models, as [6]Apple's comparison chart makes abundantly clear. What it all boils down to, though, according to Apple, is that this device is faster than 80 percent of the portable computers that shipped in the last year ' possibly including some developed by a small company in Cupertino. The screen dimensions, 2732-by-2048 pixels (at the iPad standard Retina display pixel density of 264 pixels per inch), have been deliberately chosen: the shorter dimension is exactly the same as the height of an iPad Air screen, allowing for the full vertical display of an iPad app when the iPad Pro is in landscape mode. This leaves ample room on the side for a second app's display by way of iOS 9's new Split View feature. Added to all that are four speakers ' two at the top and two at the bottom ' designed to provide high-quality stereo playback no matter how the device is oriented. It also offers the same 10 hour battery life that has been standard for nearly every iPad since the very first model. A faster iPad with better sound and a bigger screen (big enough, in fact, that the onscreen keyboard is full-size) is not all that makes this device a professional model. It's the accessories, which, for a traveling professional with an already too-heavy carry-on bag, that make it a possible substitute for the typical notebook computer. The first is the [7]Smart Keyboard that serves the same function as the Smart Cover available for other iPads ' except that this cover has an integrated physical keyboard with cloth-covered 4mm high keys that are 'laser ablated to form the shape of each key'; according to Apple, the cloth covering provides tactile feedback without requiring a thicker mechanism. The Smart Keyboard makes use of three small magnetic Smart Connectors on the side of the iPad Pro to both power the keyboard and communicate with the iPad Pro. The direct connection means that no Bluetooth pairing is required, nor is there any risk of some nearby Bluetooth hacker surreptitiously purloining your keystrokes. The second accessory is the type of device that Steve Jobs summarily dismissed (but that our own Josh Centers predicted in '[8]How Likely Is an Apple Pen?,' 6 February 2015): a stylus, called the [9]Apple Pencil. As is typical of many Apple takes on existing devices, this is no ordinary stylus. The Pencil includes sensors that communicate, 240 times per second, with other circuitry built into the iPad Pro screen to provide precise motion, location, tilt, and force data. Check out the [10]impressive Jony Ive video explaining how the Pencil works. Of course, such a stylus requires power, which is why Apple has built a Lightning connector into the top of the Pencil: plug it into the iPad Pro for 15 seconds to give it enough charge for 30 minutes of use. A full charge can power the Pencil for 12 hours. IFRAME: [11]http://www.youtube.com/embed/iicnVez5U7M Apple showed how the iPad Pro could become essential for both office and creative tasks, bringing in Kirk Konigsbauer from Microsoft to demo Office apps working side-by-side on the screen, with a user scribbling notes right on a document using the Pencil and efficiently copying and pasting data between windows. Following that was Eric Snowden from Adobe, who showed off a non-destructive layout-creation workflow with text, a photo, and a drawing in a three-app suite of Adobe apps: Comp CC, Photoshop Sketch, and the new [12]Photoshop Fix. But, as the folk in infomercials inevitably ask: how much will all of this cost you? For the iPad Pro it depends on the model: the low-end model with Wi-Fi and 32 GB of storage will cost $799; the high-end Wi-Fi model with 128 GB of storage will cost $949; and a high-end model with 128 GB of storage and both Wi-Fi and cellular capabilities will sell for $1079. The Smart Cover will run you another $169, and the Apple Pencil scribbles another $99 onto your bill. In other words, about $1,347 for a lightweight portable setup weighing less than 2 pounds. Compare the price of the iPad Pro with $1,449 for a fast MacBook Air, a 13-inch model with a 2.2GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of flash storage ' which, by the way, lacks a Retina display and weighs a full pound more than a fully tricked out iPad Pro. While many professionals need an actual Mac, with all the software and attendant services it can exploit, many others do not. It seems likely that the iPad Pro will eat up some of the sales that would otherwise be destined for the MacBook Air. Apple is no stranger to cannibalizing one product line at the benefit of another, and it appears that the iPad Pro is continuing that tradition. As an expression of Apple's vision of personal computing, the iPad Pro and its add-ons provides an apt example. Apple has long labored at developing advanced technology which would, rather than call attention to itself, instead make itself and the device containing it almost disappear in order to provide a rich immersive user experience. Along with the other products Apple announced at the same event, such as the Siri Remote and the iPhone 6s with 3D Touch touch ' all employing sophisticated technology in order to provide a tactile and immersive experience ' the iPad Pro with its Pencil and Smart Keyboard do embody that vision, a vision where the device magically vanishes in place of the actual task (or play, or game) at hand. And a vision in which, also magically, and inevitably, money vanishes from your hand and reappears in the fabled money vaults beneath Cupertino. References 1. http://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ 2. http://tidbits.com/resources/2015-09/ipad-pro-pencil.png 3. http://www.apple.com/ipad-mini-4/ 4. http://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/ 5. http://tidbits.com/resources/2015-09/iPad-Pro.png 6. http://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/ 7. http://www.apple.com/smart-keyboard/ 8. http://tidbits.com/article/15396 9. http://www.apple.com/apple-pencil/ 10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iicnVez5U7M 11. http://www.youtube.com/embed/iicnVez5U7M 12. http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2015/09/adobe-debuts-the-next-generation-of-mobile-creativity-apps-during-apple-ipad-pro-keynote.html .